Chapter 17 You Can’t Eat This Rice

Shen Qingbai also looked over at me. "What do you want to do?"

"Do nothing!" I turned around and went back to my room. Ye Yang and Feng Ruoxing followed me.

Ye Yang looked out the window with a gloomy expression. "Shall we fight our way out?"

I shook my head slightly. "This muddy water of the Tatianguan is far from as simple as we imagined."

"The Tatianguan has continued for a hundred years without anyone paying attention. Its sudden appearance this time seems reasonable on the surface, but it is also being deliberately arranged by someone."

"Ling, as a mathematician, wouldn't calculate for the sake of calculating. There must be a bigger secret hidden behind the Tatianguan."

"According to common sense, I should have followed Xuan Yue up the mountain just now. The reason I deliberately didn't go is to see who would come out to correct the mistake of the Tatianguan not having a mathematician involved?"

I hadn't been sitting in the room for long before Shen Qingbai came to the door. The first thing he said was, "I hope you can continue the Tatianguan!"

Shen Qingbai said without me having to ask, "We have lost contact with the An Tang disciples. Sixteen disciples' soul tablets have just been broken. They are in trouble over there."

I looked at him with a half-smile. Shen Qingbai took a deep breath. "I can represent the sect to invite you to continue the Tatianguan, with my life as a guarantee."

This Shen Qingbai wasn't very good at asking for help, but the promises made by someone who had never asked for help before were more reliable.

"Remember your words!" I picked up my backpack and left the hotel. Shen Qingbai followed me without saying a word until he realized that I wasn't going in the direction of Guizi Shi and couldn't help but ask, "Aren't you going to Guizi Shi?"

"I want to see if Yu Hao is telling the truth!" I was looking for someone according to the address Yu Hao left when he reported the case. The place where he lived wasn't far from Guizi Shi, but it wasn't in a straight line either. It required going three or five *li* to the east.

I said while driving, "Ye Yang, you understand feng shui. Calculate, if there is a road on the Guizi Shi side, which gate should the intersection occupy?"

"Can't calculate it!" Ye Yang shook his head.

I said in a deep voice, "Expand the scope a little. Include the Ao Xue Sect and the Snow Mountain in the calculation."

While Ye Yang was quickly calculating the position, Feng Ruoxing spoke first, "According to the feng shui calculation, the entrance to Guizi Shi is the ghost gate. If, according to the Qimen Dunjia calculation, the location of the Ao Xue Sect should be the death gate."

I frowned slightly. "Calculate the two superimposed."

"Can't calculate it, the area is too wide!" Ye Yang suddenly said, "No, the dead gate is falling plum blossoms, white snow sees red. If calculated according to feng shui, the Ao Xue Sect should have been destroyed long ago."

"Wait for me to calculate again!" Ye Yang didn't speak along the way, seeming to be calculating something all the time, but his fingers were constantly tapping the hilt of his sword.

Shen Qingbai's face became more and more unsightly. These secrets, which should have been controlled by the sect, the Ao Xue Sect hadn't discovered for hundreds of years that they had built their stronghold on the death gate. Instead, a few mathematicians had revealed the secret.

Especially since Shen Qingbai was still in charge of An Tang, the person responsible for the sect's intelligence. Shen Qingbai really couldn't save face: "Li Po, the sect is built on the death gate, how should we resolve it?"

"I don't know yet, we have to meet that fox first. Or rather, the Snow Mountain Corpse Demon." As I spoke, I had already parked the car in front of a house.

I looked up at the wolf skin hanging on the wall of that house before stepping into the gate. Before I even reached the door of the house, I saw a woman cooking with her body turned sideways.

That person shouted without turning her head, "Who's outside?"

I stood at the door and said, "Auntie, I'm a friend of Yu Hao. He asked me to help find Uncle Yu back. Did Uncle Wang and Uncle Yu go up the mountain?"

The woman dropped the spatula in her hand on the ground with a clatter. She immediately picked up the spatula and wiped her face hard with her sleeve before saying in a choked voice, "You guys sit for a while, I'll come over after I finish cooking."

I sat in the house for a while, and the woman brought the dishes to the table, setting out four sets of bowls and chopsticks before saying, "You can't eat this meal, I'll make you another table."

I knew that setting out bowls and chopsticks at the table was a custom of the mountain people. Others couldn't touch this table of food. It could only be left there. I immediately waved my hand and said, "No need! We ate before we came!"

I pointed to the bowls on the table and said, "Has anyone eaten this meal?"

The woman's eyes suddenly turned red. "No one has eaten it. The head of the house has been up the mountain for several days. I don't know how he is. I shouldn't have let him go up the mountain to find the black fox. A thousand years of black, a hundred years of white, is a black-furred fox something anyone can touch?"

When mountain people go up the mountain, their wives stay at home. There are two rules. One is that women can't cry. If a woman cries, it means that the mountain people won't come back. Even if they encounter great sadness, they have to hold back their tears and never let them fall.

The second rule is that the bowls and chopsticks must be set out for the evening meal, meaning that they are waiting for people to come back. Mountain people go down the mountain, waiting for the sun to set before entering the house. Even if they come back early, they have to wait on the nearby hillside for the sun to set.

Whether mountain people enter the door to eat, or smell the aroma of the food, depends on whether the person who comes back is alive or dead.

The fact that no one has eaten the meal may not necessarily be a bad thing.